Animal crackers

March 6 2003

Jacqui Taffel meets some colourful characters on the set of new children's show Bambaloo.

Waiting for action on the studio set of Bambaloo, Channel Seven's new show for pre-schoolers, I am reminded of Monty Python's classic sketch. "'E's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"

Not only does there appear to be a dead parrot lying on the otherwise cheerful main set, there are also a dead fish and a dead dog. What sort of children's show is this?

Suddenly, the animals begin to twitch and then, startlingly, come to life. Hidden underneath a specially constructed platform, the puppeteers have taken their places, sticking their right arms up their respective characters.

From the camera's point of view, where I'm standing, Portia the parrot, Fidget the dog and Jet the fish are now full of beans. Angela Kelly, who plays Sam, the main human character, joins them on set and, after a couple of rehearsals, they shoot the scene - three times. By the third go, I have to admire Kelly, who somehow maintains the requisite level of energy and enthusiasm, without being too over the top, for each take.

Working with puppets for the first time took some getting used to, says Kelly. "I found the really vibrant energy of the puppets was a little bit contagious and I started acting like a puppet myself," she says. "But then I learnt to go 'no, you're actually a human being', so it's OK to just be normal."");document.write("

advertisement

");
}
}
// -->

Of Bambaloo's four main puppeteers, one in particular is a veteran. David Collins started doing puppet work at the age of 10, went professional at 21 and has been in the business now for 26 years. As in acting, there are different schools of puppetry, from the broader, big-gesture style to minimalists like Collins. "It means every movement you do with the puppet must mean something."

The idea, says Emma de Vries, who operates Portia the parrot, is for the puppet not to look like a doll or stuffed animal. "It's actually alive when it's on your hand. It becomes second nature after a while ... We often find between takes that the characters themselves will keep talking."

Peeking under the set, conditions are dim and cramped. Collins and de Vries get to sit on chairs, but lanky Adam Kronenberg, who plays Fidget the dog, is contorted on a cushion in a tiny hidey-hole. Rigged up with radio mikes and scanning their lines pegged up on clipboards in front of them, the puppeteers' main tool is a small TV monitor showing them their puppets on the set above. It seems an incredible feat of co-ordination - staying out of sight, arm up in the air, operating puppets in relation to each other, saying the lines in character with the puppet's mouth moving in time and watching it all on the monitor.

According to the fourth puppeteer, it is as hard as it looks. Roslyn Oades, an actor, had never operated a puppet before Bambaloo, but was hired for her voice work. After a couple of practice sessions with Collins, it was straight in the deep end, playing the girl mouse Gypsy opposite Collins as the boy mouse Jinx.

These two characters drive the show, making things happen for the other inhabitants of the Bambaloo treehouse. The mice are also constantly hungry - only real food is used on set, from fairy cakes to Iced Vo-Vos. This added to Oades's major initial problem: spatial awareness. "I've had a few terrible incidents where I've stuck my whole mouse's head in a bowl of red tomato soup or knocked over milkshakes."

She also struggled to breath life into Gypsy. "At first I was acting everything on my face and my puppet was not doing that much." Eventually, she knew she'd made progress. "The first time someone started talking to the puppet instead of me, it was like, 'Oh, I've made it'."

Susan Oliver, the series producer, has watched small children come onto the set and talk straight to the puppet, even when the puppeteer is standing right there doing the voice. "Even the crew, instead of talking to Adam the puppeteer, they'll say 'Fidget, could you just do this?' So everyone gets into that sort of mindset."

Bambaloo is an ambitious project. As well as the main characters, there are about 35 visiting puppets provided by the Jim Henson Company, one of the show's co-producers. These extras appear over the course of the 65-episode series. Penned by 12 writers, the show also features extra footage filmed on location and original music written by various unusual suspects, including ex-Custard frontman Dave McCormack. What with post-production, animation, sound and music teams, there were 130 guests at last year's Bambaloo Christmas party.

The show departs from the usual pre-school television format that skips from one segment to another, aiming to be more like kiddie drama, with a beginning, middle and end to each episode, without being, as Oliver puts it, too "lollypop".

"You don't want everything to be sweet and nice all the time, because that's not reality for children. But what you want to do is encourage them, help them see there are ways to solve problems and conflict."

Back on set, the puppets have gone limp again as their masters give the right arm a rest. It looks like a wacky way to make a living, but as Emma de Vries explains, professional puppeteers take their work seriously. "It's not just dolly-waggling."